French Rococo Era Painter, 1703-1770
Francois Boucher seems to have been perfectly attuned to his times, a period which had cast off the pomp and circumstance characteristic of the preceding age of Louis XIV and had replaced formality and ritual by intimacy and artificial manners. Boucher was very much bound to the whims of this frivolous society, and he painted primarily what his patrons wanted to see. It appears that their sight was best satisfied by amorous subjects, both mythological and contemporary. The painter was only too happy to supply them, creating the boudoir art for which he is so famous.
Boucher was born in Paris on Sept. 29, 1703, the son of Nicolas Boucher, a decorator who specialized in embroidery design. Recognizing his sons artistic potential, the father placed young Boucher in the studio of François Lemoyne, a decorator-painter who worked in the manner of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Though Boucher remained in Lemoynes studio only a short time, he probably derived his love of delicately voluptuous forms and his brilliant color palette from the older masters penchant for mimicking the Venetian decorative painters. Related Paintings of Francois Boucher :. | The Visit of Venus to Vulcan | madame de pompadour | LOdalisque | Spring | Are They Thinking About the Grape | Related Artists:Antropov, AlekseiRussian Painter, 1716-1795Memmo di Filippuccio1433 - 1494Theodor Kittelsen 1857-1914,was a Norwegian artist born in the coastal town of Kragero in Norway. He is famous for his nature paintings on the one hand, and on the other hand for his illustrations of fairytales and legends, especially of trolls. For a time, Kittelsen studied painting and watchmaking. When his talent was discovered by Diderich Maria Aall, he attended classes at the School of Art in Christiania (the present Oslo). Because of generous financial support by Aall he was able to continue his study in Munich. However, in 1879 Diderich Aall could no longer manage to support him, so Kittelsen had to earn his money as a draughtsman for German papers and magazines. When back in Norway, he found nature to be a great inspiration. Kittelsen started to write texts to his drawings here. In 1881, Kittelsen was hired to illustrate Norwegian fairy-tales by the Norwegian folklore collector Peter Christen Asbjornsen. His style could be classified between (Neo-)Romantic and naive painting. As a national artist he is highly respected and well known in Norway, but does not receive much international attention, which is the reason that his name is hardly registered in registers of painters. Black metal bands such as Burzum have used nearly all of his pictures as album art, notably illustrations taken from Kittelsen book Svartedauen (The Black Death).